Another month, another short story completed and posted. This month, A Painful Blessing is now available on all major digital ebook sites. It introduces one of the legendary heroes of my fantasy world at the beginning of his long adventurous life. Since his life is so full of major events I hope to return soon with more when I can.
Coming up next month will be my first sci-fi short, Nemesis Probe. Shared some of the beginning with one of my writing groups and got some great feedback. I was especially happy to hear that my main character, a heroine, was well received and actually made sense to my reviewers. They had some issues with motivations, but overall liked the character. That made me smile.
At my other writing group I got some great feedback on the first chapters of An Empire Forgotten novel, which I am still struggling to complete. Its a balancing act. I know I need to improve the first sections with a better plot, and some additional details, then just carry the changes throughout the rest of the novel. Unfortunately, the new short story blitz I’ve been on diverts my attention away from the concentrated effort I need to complete the work and finish a final draft.
I’m loving the discipline of the monthly shorts, the actual completion of a story in less than 10k words. But that leaves little time to focus on the bigger, more important story I want to tell. Something may have to give and I’m unsure on which side I should fall. Novels definitely get you noticed more than short stories, but there remains months of hard work to get AEF into shape for publication.
Decisions, decisions.
As an aside, was reminded of one my favorite artists William Stout this week with his release of Monsters Sketchbook Four at Comic Con 2013 with a nod to Jack Davis (another all time favorite of mine). I’ve always loved Stout’s inking style, and his interest and intricate drawings of dinosaurs is fascinating to this day. Now I discover he also does fine arts and found his Antarctic penguin paintings absolutely spellbinding.
Highly recommended.
UPDATE: Nemesis Probe completed and sent out to beta-readers for review. That is all.
